The Daily Telegraph THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1883.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3871, 13 December 1883, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1883.

It iH always a matter of difficulty to study a political system, when the advocate or admirer of that particular .system cither generalises or hides himself in a cloud of theory and refuses to descend to the level of the practical. This was the attitude assumed by Mr Stout in his recent lecture here. If we venture to point out flaws in his god democracy, ho immediately replies a democracy that permits or allows such flaws can be no true democracy; he immediately soars far above any democracy, with which either is acquainted, and rails, not at democracy, but at those who allow such blemish spots to exist. A practical politician treats all questions from a practical point of view ; but Mr Stout is not a practical politician, but a theorist and a dreamer, and therefore scorns the methods and modes of working out a problem which men of equal intelligence and ability with himself find necessary to employ. Compromise and delay may be described as the two leading factors that have achieved greatness for England in its constitutional progress and development. Compromise has ever boen a strong weapon in the hands of a practical politician ; while delay, though vexatious to the radical mind, has tended to mature thought and facilitate the growth of public opinion on many points which in their early stages were crude and knotty. The want of delay has burdened the statutes of Now Zealand witli Act upon Act, simply making confusion greater, and the crudenese of much of our legislation is visible in the number of Acts passed each session to amend Acts passed in the preceding one. Mr Stout, who wo will admit ought to know, says "the Conservatives deeiro not chango tor the sake of change. "Wo hopo no political party desires cnango ,

simply for change. Wo would be sorry for a moment to think that even the most ultra of radical politicians has such a desire. At the same time, like it or not as wo will, there is no going back one Btep—democracy's cry is ever for more, it yields no point it ever gains, it gives nothing back, and we who see many of its evils are surely therefore justified in clogging its chariot wheels, so that no reform may bo granted till we are not only assured of its necessity but that it will be for the good of the race. We know democracies before today have erred grievously; wo need not point to ancient history—we need not say that a democracy killed Socrates—we need only point to our own present Assembly and study the men returned by universal suffrage, and think of the men rejected. When we so think we are at once driven to a conclusion—old as democracy itself—that democracies are both thoughtless and ungrateful. Mr Stout 'says the man who ignores politics as beneath him is no true citizen. Experienceleads us to the conclusion that the carpet-baggers of America and the wire-pullors of these colonies—tho men who do study politics—have "axes" to grind, and that the good of their race or country is about the last thing that any one of them would consider. Theoretically such should not bo the case in a democracy, but practically we know it is. That vast republic with its "fifty millions of people, having the people able to assert their power and authority " exi&ts but in theory. Tho wire-pullers control the State elections in America in a manner that the most corrupt of English constituencies have never approached to. Men are even nominated for tho Presidency, not because of their conspicious ability, but because their opponents can throw but little mud at them. For tho> truth of that statement one has only to remember the nomination of Garfield, and the position he occupied in the earlier ballots. In democracies, as elsewhere, wo opine that the man who docs best for himself will do best for his race, and that moral heroism is something very different than sacrificing ono's-self for one's race. Perhaps a better definition of moral heroism would be, he who, in the face of overwhelming numbers, believing he has right on his side, maintains that right in the face of all opposition, and it must never bo forgotten that nearly all reforms have sprung from small minorities who were opposed by majorities. The correspondent "Native" who took up the cudgels on behalf of Mr Stout displayed more iugeniousness than ingenuousness in his reply. The cost of governing a country can scarcely be calculated from the head of that government alone. Nor is it correct to describe Lincoln (a barrister of a quarter a century's standing before being elected President), Grant (chosen because oi bis personal popularity and his utter want of any politics), and Garfield (selected by two defeated sections to spite a third) as he does. As for his bathos as to how these men havo shone, they have shone brightesl when they have done nothing, when the political coach, the State, has been allowed to proceed on its course without interference. Our correspondent is not unlike his master, Mr Stout; he is impracticable, place whom he would "in the highest office of the State," the debt of New Zealand would remain to be paid back some day in hard casl; in spite of all theories and all theorising